Those of you who’re concerned about botting, both here and over on /r/eve where I’ll also be posting this message, are 100% right. It’s an absolute plague, and it’s something that every MMO feels the wrath of. People who bot don’t give a ■■■■ about the game, they just want either a fast way to accrue wealth and cool stuff, or they’re looking for an easy way to build the resources to RMT.
Regardless of their motives, it’s to the detriment of the game and it needs to be stamped out. It’s garbage behavior, it’s against the rules, and it’s something that has a magnified effect in EVE because of the single shard nature of the game, the economy, and the fact that everything on the market is player built or sourced.
Are we doing enough at this stage to combat it? No, I don’t think we are, despite the fact that our Security Team are doing a rock solid job and are working flat out to combat these kinds of issues. I also don’t think it’s acceptable that it’s making our pilots feel like their efforts are diminished, and neither do our security guys.
We discussed this both internally and with the CSM today over the course of several sessions, given that it’s a recurring theme that keeps coming up. We’re looking to change things in the coming weeks and months, and to see some more concrete action on RMT and botting.
I’ve also taken this to the leadership of the EVE Dev Team too, throughout December and January, in the regular meetings that I have with them. I’ll continue to do so, and I’ll continue to keep it a top priority until it’s addressed.
However, that’s going to take a little bit of time.
Over the course of the weekend, CCP Peligro and CCP Grimmi have been doing Bob’s work, and have taken out just under a thousand accounts that were complicit in botting. They’ll continue to kick the ■■■■ out of as many more as they can going forward.
There’s the undertone in this thread that we don’t care about botting because it brings in revenue. To be frank, that’s entirely wrong. We lose far more than we gain when the ISK and assets generated from botting go to the scumbags who’re RMTing it on third party sites.
What’s more troubling for me though, is when it gets used illegitimately to fund wars for corps and alliances that leave their adversaries who play by the rules on the back foot, at a disadvantage and demoralized. There’s few things more that annoy me in EVE than people who aren’t playing by the few basic rules that we do have.
I don’t really have much more of an update for now, we’re still exploring ways to tackle this effectively and I’m not going to ■■■■■■■■ you guys. Just wanted to post here and make sure that you were aware that this is something that’s firmly on our radar.
I spoke about more concrete action against it, and that’s something we’re exploring right now. There’s a lot of things to consider in terms of how to tackle a problem like this and it’s not just as simple as “ban everyone who looks like a bot”, because that ends up with a lot of false positives, which results in false economy.
For sure though, I want you all to know that this is something that’s top of the list, and that I’m working closely with our security guys (CCP Peligro and CCP Grimmi, who’re pretty vicious with this stuff) to make sure that we can effectively stamp it out.
We’re going to focus on getting through the CSM Summit this week, then we’ll have an update for you guys as soon as we can.